GOP group targets greens in new campaign

A top Republican action group is spending at least $100,000 for an online advertising campaign dedicated to mocking well-known environmentalists, green donors and the candidates they support.

America Rising Squared, an affiliate of opposition research firm America Rising, said the effort includes tracking figures like activist Bill McKibben and billionaire donor Tom Steyer, researching them and producing digital advertisements to highlight controversial statements and positions from them.

{mosads}“Tom Steyer made a fortune investing in oil and coal, and is now dumping an unprecedented amount of money into political causes which promise to increase the value of his latest investments in ‘green energy,’ ” Brian Rogers, America Rising Squared’s executive director, said in a statement.

“America Rising Squared will hold Steyer and the Environmentalist Left accountable for their epic hypocrisy and extreme positions which threaten America’s future prosperity,” he said.

The announcement came days after Steyer rolled out a $25 million effort through his NextGen Climate group to encourage millennials to vote for candidates who want to take dramatic action to stop climate change.

He spent $74 million in the 2014 midterm elections trying to elect climate-friendly candidates, producing mixed results.

Steyer has hosted fundraisers for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton but has not formally endorsed her.

The group is pledging to apply the same level of scrutiny to environmentalists that opposition research firms apply to presidential candidates, such as video trackers following them.

It’s an unprecedented amount of effort and money for opponents to pour into a campaign that’s focused on people other than candidates running for office.

The home for the anti-environmentalist campaign is corenews.org.

The first video it rolled out mocks statements made by Steyer, McKibben, Clinton and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, including Clinton’s statement that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” and Sanders’ position that climate change “is directly related to the growth of terrorism.”